Orientation: Bisexual. She’d probably be more likely to be romantically attracted to a woman, but she is definitely bisexual, so go with either a husband or a wife.
She is basically a long-haired lady with tattoos down her arms, torso, and likely other places. She also has piercings in her eyebrows, ears, and lower lip. Based on her grown-up alternate reality self (the Dolorosa) she is likely notably tall.
Porrim stands out amongst the other trolls from Beforus in that she is mature and has a good head on her shoulders. While the others tend to be immature (not necessarily in the ‘childish’ sense, but in the literal ‘not having matured as an adult yet sense’) in various ways (Cronus being a selfish asshole, Latula overcompensating for her insecurities, and Kankri…well, I will get to him later), she appears to be older than the others mentally despite being the same age as them all. This is all undoubtedly due to the fact that she was designed to be and is essentially a mother figure, as all incarnations of the Virgo trolls are in one way or another.
Porrim shows her maturity and intelligence by being able to see, deconstruct, and explain complex issues to others. This is most often seen her in attempts to enlighten her friends on gender inequality on both Beforus and Alternia. The two that this comes up often with are Kankri and Latula: with the former, Porrim’s attempts fail due to Kankri not believing the gender inequality exists in troll society and the latter for—while supporting Porrim’s idea—does not entirely get the nuances of the concepts. She also very succinctly explained the rolls of Doc Scratch, Lord English, the Handmaid, and The Condesce to Meenah, which is in and of itself a complex for most to explain. She also shows a tactical side to herself as she immediately suggests Meenah find any God Tiers to help build the army the princess spontaneously decided to assemble and then build the rest around them; while being a pretty blatant suggestion (try to get the immortal people with super powers first) Meenah had not thought of it first.
Porrim further shows her intelligence and perception and ability to understand nuanced concepts (blah blah blah, aka ‘maturity’) by seeing past both Kankri’s and Latula’s perceptions of her feminism: she comments that the fact Kankri only dismisses societal topics that she brings up is likely indicative that he rejects them solely because he is rebelling against her (with her having a pseudo-mother/son relationship and the fact he arbitrarily rebels against her regarding anything she does for him, this appears to be an accurate theory); regarding Latula, Porrim points out that she knows for a fact that the girl is smart despite Latula feigning cluelessness whenever Porrim explains the nuances of her beliefs, and how Latula’s behavior is more of an attempt to overcompensate for her insecurities than as an actual method of supporting feminism due to some inherent flaws in the logic behind her behavior regarding it.
Another aspect of Porrim that strikes one as uncharacteristically mature of the trolls is the way she cares for the other trolls: her relationship with Kankri, in particular, resembles that of a tough-love mother with a rebellious teenage son—in the middle of an argument, she does not hesitate to rub some food off of Kankri’s face and chastise him for being messy; with Latula, she is able to make the other girl feel at ease so that she does not feel the need to be so over-the-top with her ‘can do badass cool girl’ gimmick and is able to be herself, and Porrim is able to make her feel better about her concerns pretty quickly. Another example that was, sadly, not shown on-screen was Porrim not only comforting Kanaya (who had spent up to then two years feeling like a complete and utter failure) and giving the girl renewed hope in a short time.
The above are also examples of Porrim’s general charming and charismatic nature. Kankri aside, all the others (even Meenah) enjoy speaking with Porrim and enjoy her presence. She was also able to obviously calm Kanaya down to have a conversation with her—Kanaya was ‘in shambles’ at the very thought of speaking with Porrim, but afterwards was comfortable with doing so and described her as nice and cool. People naturally feel comfortable speaking with her, even the characters that were heavily suggested to having a romantic/sexual relationship with her: particularly Latula, who still obviously holds Porrim in high regard and as a close friend despite having had and broken off an intimate relationship at some point. And let us be frank, how many teenage relationships of that type end up with those involved still being close friends?
Alright, it is impossible to speak of Porrim without getting into feminism. It was put off to this point in the section because it is possible to overlook the other facets of her personality and to twist her role as a feminist into something it is not, such as making it the entirety of her personality or giving her qualities offensive to feminism. As stated by Wikipedia, a feminist is “an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women”. Period. And that is what Porrim is: she believes men and women are equal, their rights should be equal, and their roles in society should be equal. She sees flaws in Beforus society that put females in a less-than-equal position: for example, her own caste (the jadebloods) are either entirely or almost entirely female and are restricted solely to being kept in caves for the entirety of their lives to raise baby trolls; on the flip side, the two ruling castes below the highest caste (which contains ONLY the empress and the princess, period) are drastically male-dominated and are the ones that hold most of the power in enforcing rules, laws, societal norms, and the like. While Beforus is by definition a matriarchy (there is an Empress, so…duh), it is apparent from Porrim’s explanation and not at all unbelievable that the far larger-in-number penultimate and antepenultimate male-dominated ruling classes would have a larger influence in society. As those in power try to keep their power, it is not unexpected that they would keep the other classes—including the female-dominated castes, such as Porrim’s—under their control and their roles static. She does not go into details regarding the other female-dominated castes (presumably the castes of the female Alternia/Beforus trolls) or the roles of any other castes so it is difficult to determine other possible flaws in Alternian and Beforan society regarding gender inequality.
Porrim initially rebelled against her enforced role, but eventually came to accept the task—under her own free will of choice, not because she was forced to, which is key. It can be assumed that this rebelliousness was similar to Latula’s overcompensation but Porrim eventually matured and realized, as she told Latula, that attempting to show women are equal via over-the-top feats—and perhaps attempting to show some superiority rather than equality—she was actually lending credence to the argument she was attempting to disprove: to show women were as good as men she attempted to spurn things stereotypically female (her role of raising the newborns in particular) and go over-the-top, which she realized suggested that there WAS some innate flaw in being female that she had to overcome to prove herself equal—which is the point she makes to Latula, who goes on and on about being just as capable as or even better than guys at various things and perceiving the idea of creating equality as a ‘us versus them’ situation, which Porrim understands is not the case.
So, while this following part should be unnecessary, I feel it is needed due to the many misconceptions and blatant misunderstandings of the concept of feminism and feminists. Porrim does not hate men and does not believe they should be removed from society. Porrim does not feel women are superior: she does not believe either gender is superior to the other, hence equal. Porrim does not twist every conversation towards her beliefs (like someone else who I will get to). She does not believe things society associates with feminine are bad—she herself wears a dress and ended up taking pride in her singular ability to raise trolls—she believes it should be a choice. Porrim does not perceive sex as a negative thing (good god I’ll get to that as well). Again, the previous section should not be a necessary clarification of her, her beliefs, or anything else, but there are enough misconceptions that these were, in the end, probably necessary.
Another topic important to Porrim and very necessary to mention is that Porrim is a very sexual person. She is comfortable with it, straight-up enjoys it, she makes innuendo, she flirts with others, and is content with having had numerous relationships that did not last despite that not being seen as a positive seen by others.
Naturally, Porrim does have flaws, even though she is not a walking personification of teenage flaws like most of the other Beforan trolls. She enjoy gossiping with others and talking about others behind their backs, which is arguably not a very nice thing to do and a bit contradictory to her otherwise considerate and compassionate nature. While she admits that she has few secrets and likely does not put much effort into keeping her secrets secret that does not justify the behavior. She also criticizes other’s fashion which can be bad, but at the same time this only occurred with Kankri and his quite literally wearing pants that reached to his armpits.
Some argue that her lack of long-term relationships is a flaw, but due both her and those involved with her (Aranea and Latula) being ok with it and their friendships being perfectly fine, it’s difficult to consider it a flaw beyond the reasoning that standard society considers it one.
Here is a small list of other characters that have seemingly similar traits as Porrim that I will contrast.
- Kankri: o While at first it appears that both are proponents of drawing attention and care towards societal issues, it is very much and absolutely necessary to see that the two are foils for one-another. Kankri represents the negative version of a ‘social justice’ person while Porrim represents the positive (or just normal) version. Kankri is obsessed with being right and making sure everyone knows he is right and that they are wrong, while being offensive to those he is speaking to and also those he is supposedly trying to help (such as Mituna, who has brain damage, and Kankri criticizes for supposedly being an embarrassing example, which is tremendously offensive). On the flipside, Porrim tries to do what is right. Being right is totally irrelevant. So long as the issues she cares about have attention and concern brought to them, and are eventually improved, she does not care if she was ‘right’ and does not care about making others feel stupid for not knowing the things she does. She explains the possible flaw inherent in Latula’s behavior, but does not do so cruelly and does not criticize her as a person.
- Cronus: o Cronus is a flirt. Porrim is a flirt. However, the distinct and important difference is that Porrim cares about the other person feeling comfortable, will not cross inappropriate lines (Cronus canonically straight up sexually assaults someone), and, most of all, thinks about things BESIDES flirting. She is also infinitely better at it due to the fact that she is genuine in her compliments and friendliness, whereas it is a façade Cronus uses explicitly in an attempt to get into someone’s pants.
- Damara: o Similar to the contrast with Cronus. Damara likes sex. Porrim likes sex. However, like with Cronus, Damara thinks of little else and has absolutely no consideration for the well-being and feelings of others. This is explicitly shown in canon as Porrim shows no patience and only contempt for Damara making others feel uncomfortable, and tells her to stay away from Kanaya.
- Kanaya: o Being dimensional counterparts, descendants/ancestors of one-another, and some sort of genetic clones of one-another, a comparison with Kanaya is obvious. Differences between the two include Kanaya’s far more chaste demeanor (she does not flirt, wears clothes that do not reveal much skin, is not particularly good or comfortable with things relating to sex), Kanaya’s insecurities (Kanaya is, well, insecure about herself in many aspects, whereas Porrim is confident and comfortable with herself), their treatment of their roles as jadebloods and progenitors of their race (Porrim rejected the responsibility then later accepted it, whereas Kanaya had always accepted it and made it an important part of her life), and lastly Kanaya is arguably an introvert (keeping her emotions contained, appearing serious, sometimes awkward with conversing) while Porrim is certainly an extrovert (willing to speak her mind, flirtatious, speaking much more plainly than Kanaya).
Abilites:
Porrim is basically a space vampire, so most everything is just standard vampire stuff. Aside from the glowing.
- Needs to feed off blood. - Can recover from most any wound with enough blood to drink. - Can glow like a lightbulb. - She is probably stronger than an ordinary human of her size, being an alien and also a vampire. - Her talents range from being a seamstress, having excellent sense of style, and things that are likely inappropriate to mention.
Porrim was regretting not taking the time to learn a bit about humans and their culture like a few of her friends had. Perhaps if she had, she would be having an easier time adjusting to being one. It could be far worse, of course: after dealing with Sgrub and a doomed session for three sweeps (how many human years was that? See, she did not even take the time to find out how to compare the two species’ major forms of time) and being dead for a millennia, there was little that could outright distress or disturb her. However, this sudden change in body was nonetheless difficult. However, it could be worse: she could have been put into the body of some tentacle slime monster or something.
But even with the body aside, she was now expected to live the life of a human. How was she going to pull that off, knowing absolutely nothing about the culture beyond some offhanded comments from Kankri?
...Wow, for the very first time in she could not remember how long, she felt distress; she felt the sensation of something new and strange. She felt the feeling of a challenge and maybe intimidation. Maybe this was not a bad thing after all: perhaps this will bring about some change in her, which a millennia in stagnant memories had left impossible.
So, in the end, she decided this bizarre circumstance may very well be a good thing. And despite the situation being notable confusing, intimidating, frustrating, depressing, and any number of other –ings, Porrim had only one solution, which she believed to be the only possible one and which she accepts readily.
She had been standing in the lawnring in front of the human hive this entire time and decides shouting “Hey, can someone come over here and help me out?” to anyone within earshot was that solution. Or, at least, the first step towards the solution of dealing with this nonsense.
OTHER Housing Request?: Nope. Did you read the rules and FAQ?: No. WAIT YES. Yes. Yes I did. Would you like your application to be unscreened?: Sure.
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Porrim Maryam ♍ Homestuck ♍ Reserved
Player: Hustino
Age: 25
Personal Journal:
Contact Info:
Other Characters: N/A
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Characters Name: Porrim Maryam
Age: 19
Canon: Homestuck
Canon Point: Post Act 6 Intermission III
Species: Troll. Also a vampire. Also a ghost?
Gender: Female
Orientation: Bisexual. She’d probably be more likely to be romantically attracted to a woman, but she is definitely bisexual, so go with either a husband or a wife.
History: Brief history.
Appearance: Picture!
She is basically a long-haired lady with tattoos down her arms, torso, and likely other places. She also has piercings in her eyebrows, ears, and lower lip. Based on her grown-up alternate reality self (the Dolorosa) she is likely notably tall.
no subject
Porrim stands out amongst the other trolls from Beforus in that she is mature and has a good head on her shoulders. While the others tend to be immature (not necessarily in the ‘childish’ sense, but in the literal ‘not having matured as an adult yet sense’) in various ways (Cronus being a selfish asshole, Latula overcompensating for her insecurities, and Kankri…well, I will get to him later), she appears to be older than the others mentally despite being the same age as them all. This is all undoubtedly due to the fact that she was designed to be and is essentially a mother figure, as all incarnations of the Virgo trolls are in one way or another.
Porrim shows her maturity and intelligence by being able to see, deconstruct, and explain complex issues to others. This is most often seen her in attempts to enlighten her friends on gender inequality on both Beforus and Alternia. The two that this comes up often with are Kankri and Latula: with the former, Porrim’s attempts fail due to Kankri not believing the gender inequality exists in troll society and the latter for—while supporting Porrim’s idea—does not entirely get the nuances of the concepts. She also very succinctly explained the rolls of Doc Scratch, Lord English, the Handmaid, and The Condesce to Meenah, which is in and of itself a complex for most to explain. She also shows a tactical side to herself as she immediately suggests Meenah find any God Tiers to help build the army the princess spontaneously decided to assemble and then build the rest around them; while being a pretty blatant suggestion (try to get the immortal people with super powers first) Meenah had not thought of it first.
Porrim further shows her intelligence and perception and ability to understand nuanced concepts (blah blah blah, aka ‘maturity’) by seeing past both Kankri’s and Latula’s perceptions of her feminism: she comments that the fact Kankri only dismisses societal topics that she brings up is likely indicative that he rejects them solely because he is rebelling against her (with her having a pseudo-mother/son relationship and the fact he arbitrarily rebels against her regarding anything she does for him, this appears to be an accurate theory); regarding Latula, Porrim points out that she knows for a fact that the girl is smart despite Latula feigning cluelessness whenever Porrim explains the nuances of her beliefs, and how Latula’s behavior is more of an attempt to overcompensate for her insecurities than as an actual method of supporting feminism due to some inherent flaws in the logic behind her behavior regarding it.
Another aspect of Porrim that strikes one as uncharacteristically mature of the trolls is the way she cares for the other trolls: her relationship with Kankri, in particular, resembles that of a tough-love mother with a rebellious teenage son—in the middle of an argument, she does not hesitate to rub some food off of Kankri’s face and chastise him for being messy; with Latula, she is able to make the other girl feel at ease so that she does not feel the need to be so over-the-top with her ‘can do badass cool girl’ gimmick and is able to be herself, and Porrim is able to make her feel better about her concerns pretty quickly. Another example that was, sadly, not shown on-screen was Porrim not only comforting Kanaya (who had spent up to then two years feeling like a complete and utter failure) and giving the girl renewed hope in a short time.
The above are also examples of Porrim’s general charming and charismatic nature. Kankri aside, all the others (even Meenah) enjoy speaking with Porrim and enjoy her presence. She was also able to obviously calm Kanaya down to have a conversation with her—Kanaya was ‘in shambles’ at the very thought of speaking with Porrim, but afterwards was comfortable with doing so and described her as nice and cool. People naturally feel comfortable speaking with her, even the characters that were heavily suggested to having a romantic/sexual relationship with her: particularly Latula, who still obviously holds Porrim in high regard and as a close friend despite having had and broken off an intimate relationship at some point. And let us be frank, how many teenage relationships of that type end up with those involved still being close friends?
Alright, it is impossible to speak of Porrim without getting into feminism. It was put off to this point in the section because it is possible to overlook the other facets of her personality and to twist her role as a feminist into something it is not, such as making it the entirety of her personality or giving her qualities offensive to feminism. As stated by Wikipedia, a feminist is “an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women”. Period. And that is what Porrim is: she believes men and women are equal, their rights should be equal, and their roles in society should be equal. She sees flaws in Beforus society that put females in a less-than-equal position: for example, her own caste (the jadebloods) are either entirely or almost entirely female and are restricted solely to being kept in caves for the entirety of their lives to raise baby trolls; on the flip side, the two ruling castes below the highest caste (which contains ONLY the empress and the princess, period) are drastically male-dominated and are the ones that hold most of the power in enforcing rules, laws, societal norms, and the like. While Beforus is by definition a matriarchy (there is an Empress, so…duh), it is apparent from Porrim’s explanation and not at all unbelievable that the far larger-in-number penultimate and antepenultimate male-dominated ruling classes would have a larger influence in society. As those in power try to keep their power, it is not unexpected that they would keep the other classes—including the female-dominated castes, such as Porrim’s—under their control and their roles static. She does not go into details regarding the other female-dominated castes (presumably the castes of the female Alternia/Beforus trolls) or the roles of any other castes so it is difficult to determine other possible flaws in Alternian and Beforan society regarding gender inequality.
Porrim initially rebelled against her enforced role, but eventually came to accept the task—under her own free will of choice, not because she was forced to, which is key. It can be assumed that this rebelliousness was similar to Latula’s overcompensation but Porrim eventually matured and realized, as she told Latula, that attempting to show women are equal via over-the-top feats—and perhaps attempting to show some superiority rather than equality—she was actually lending credence to the argument she was attempting to disprove: to show women were as good as men she attempted to spurn things stereotypically female (her role of raising the newborns in particular) and go over-the-top, which she realized suggested that there WAS some innate flaw in being female that she had to overcome to prove herself equal—which is the point she makes to Latula, who goes on and on about being just as capable as or even better than guys at various things and perceiving the idea of creating equality as a ‘us versus them’ situation, which Porrim understands is not the case.
So, while this following part should be unnecessary, I feel it is needed due to the many misconceptions and blatant misunderstandings of the concept of feminism and feminists. Porrim does not hate men and does not believe they should be removed from society. Porrim does not feel women are superior: she does not believe either gender is superior to the other, hence equal. Porrim does not twist every conversation towards her beliefs (like someone else who I will get to). She does not believe things society associates with feminine are bad—she herself wears a dress and ended up taking pride in her singular ability to raise trolls—she believes it should be a choice. Porrim does not perceive sex as a negative thing (good god I’ll get to that as well). Again, the previous section should not be a necessary clarification of her, her beliefs, or anything else, but there are enough misconceptions that these were, in the end, probably necessary.
Another topic important to Porrim and very necessary to mention is that Porrim is a very sexual person. She is comfortable with it, straight-up enjoys it, she makes innuendo, she flirts with others, and is content with having had numerous relationships that did not last despite that not being seen as a positive seen by others.
Naturally, Porrim does have flaws, even though she is not a walking personification of teenage flaws like most of the other Beforan trolls. She enjoy gossiping with others and talking about others behind their backs, which is arguably not a very nice thing to do and a bit contradictory to her otherwise considerate and compassionate nature. While she admits that she has few secrets and likely does not put much effort into keeping her secrets secret that does not justify the behavior. She also criticizes other’s fashion which can be bad, but at the same time this only occurred with Kankri and his quite literally wearing pants that reached to his armpits.
Some argue that her lack of long-term relationships is a flaw, but due both her and those involved with her (Aranea and Latula) being ok with it and their friendships being perfectly fine, it’s difficult to consider it a flaw beyond the reasoning that standard society considers it one.
no subject
- Kankri:
o While at first it appears that both are proponents of drawing attention and care towards societal issues, it is very much and absolutely necessary to see that the two are foils for one-another. Kankri represents the negative version of a ‘social justice’ person while Porrim represents the positive (or just normal) version. Kankri is obsessed with being right and making sure everyone knows he is right and that they are wrong, while being offensive to those he is speaking to and also those he is supposedly trying to help (such as Mituna, who has brain damage, and Kankri criticizes for supposedly being an embarrassing example, which is tremendously offensive). On the flipside, Porrim tries to do what is right. Being right is totally irrelevant. So long as the issues she cares about have attention and concern brought to them, and are eventually improved, she does not care if she was ‘right’ and does not care about making others feel stupid for not knowing the things she does. She explains the possible flaw inherent in Latula’s behavior, but does not do so cruelly and does not criticize her as a person.
- Cronus:
o Cronus is a flirt. Porrim is a flirt. However, the distinct and important difference is that Porrim cares about the other person feeling comfortable, will not cross inappropriate lines (Cronus canonically straight up sexually assaults someone), and, most of all, thinks about things BESIDES flirting. She is also infinitely better at it due to the fact that she is genuine in her compliments and friendliness, whereas it is a façade Cronus uses explicitly in an attempt to get into someone’s pants.
- Damara:
o Similar to the contrast with Cronus. Damara likes sex. Porrim likes sex. However, like with Cronus, Damara thinks of little else and has absolutely no consideration for the well-being and feelings of others. This is explicitly shown in canon as Porrim shows no patience and only contempt for Damara making others feel uncomfortable, and tells her to stay away from Kanaya.
- Kanaya:
o Being dimensional counterparts, descendants/ancestors of one-another, and some sort of genetic clones of one-another, a comparison with Kanaya is obvious. Differences between the two include Kanaya’s far more chaste demeanor (she does not flirt, wears clothes that do not reveal much skin, is not particularly good or comfortable with things relating to sex), Kanaya’s insecurities (Kanaya is, well, insecure about herself in many aspects, whereas Porrim is confident and comfortable with herself), their treatment of their roles as jadebloods and progenitors of their race (Porrim rejected the responsibility then later accepted it, whereas Kanaya had always accepted it and made it an important part of her life), and lastly Kanaya is arguably an introvert (keeping her emotions contained, appearing serious, sometimes awkward with conversing) while Porrim is certainly an extrovert (willing to speak her mind, flirtatious, speaking much more plainly than Kanaya).
Abilites:
Porrim is basically a space vampire, so most everything is just standard vampire stuff. Aside from the glowing.
- Needs to feed off blood.
- Can recover from most any wound with enough blood to drink.
- Can glow like a lightbulb.
- She is probably stronger than an ordinary human of her size, being an alien and also a vampire.
- Her talents range from being a seamstress, having excellent sense of style, and things that are likely inappropriate to mention.
no subject
SAMPLES
First Person:
Post and threads from Dear Mun.
Third Person:
Porrim was regretting not taking the time to learn a bit about humans and their culture like a few of her friends had. Perhaps if she had, she would be having an easier time adjusting to being one. It could be far worse, of course: after dealing with Sgrub and a doomed session for three sweeps (how many human years was that? See, she did not even take the time to find out how to compare the two species’ major forms of time) and being dead for a millennia, there was little that could outright distress or disturb her. However, this sudden change in body was nonetheless difficult. However, it could be worse: she could have been put into the body of some tentacle slime monster or something.
But even with the body aside, she was now expected to live the life of a human. How was she going to pull that off, knowing absolutely nothing about the culture beyond some offhanded comments from Kankri?
...Wow, for the very first time in she could not remember how long, she felt distress; she felt the sensation of something new and strange. She felt the feeling of a challenge and maybe intimidation. Maybe this was not a bad thing after all: perhaps this will bring about some change in her, which a millennia in stagnant memories had left impossible.
So, in the end, she decided this bizarre circumstance may very well be a good thing. And despite the situation being notable confusing, intimidating, frustrating, depressing, and any number of other –ings, Porrim had only one solution, which she believed to be the only possible one and which she accepts readily.
She had been standing in the lawnring in front of the human hive this entire time and decides shouting “Hey, can someone come over here and help me out?” to anyone within earshot was that solution. Or, at least, the first step towards the solution of dealing with this nonsense.
OTHER
Housing Request?: Nope.
Did you read the rules and FAQ?: No. WAIT YES. Yes. Yes I did.
Would you like your application to be unscreened?: Sure.
Accepted
Congrats, your application has been accepted! Your character is now living at 1444 in Holly Heights, with a spouse slot. In order to get the ball rolling, here's what you need to do:
I hope you enjoy your stay here!
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